Pages of Note

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Earth Day

Let's observe a moment of silence for the young dolphins who will not see Earth Day 2011 because of what happened on Earth Day 2010.

(pause)

They were victims of a mass addiction to fossil fuels and a reckless use of those fuels. Collateral Damage is the best term for those killed by the oil spill. They were the necessary casualties for doing business in such extreme conditions for so long at such a large scale. I think we're reaching the point where it's clear anything is possible but we're starting to see the true costs in the corpses on battlefields and on beaches. We feel the consequences as families are torn apart and habitats are destroyed and if you take your eyes off the gas pump gauge it goes from $4.00 to $17.30 in like ten seconds. So, the cars that save no one any time and end up costing us money to keep us on the treadmill are also the cause of death and destruction to other animals. I forget the movie where someone said about war, "It doesn't save lives. People die, just different people."

I sort of think it's only tolerable because of our short attention spans. Only immediate trauma to us actually penetrates the armor of indifference we wear. Maybe that's how it has always been but somehow I never got issued that armor. Was I playing whiffle ball when it was handed out? Because in 1991 when I saw the pictures of the oil spill in the Persian Gulf (remember how those pictures were widely circulated to demonstrate how monstrous Saddam Hussein was? BP suppressed all pictures of dead wildlife for the same reason.)It broke my heart to see this, like watching a pet be killed by some demented baby. I once had some affinity for some people but serious thoughts of genocide crossed my mind when I saw this. My reasoning was that the animal that could carelessly and thoughtlessly destroy these dolphins wasn't just worthless, but was actually a negative influence on life. It had surrendered its right to live. If there is a God then let God have a talk with them. If there isn't a God then better to end the madness now.All men are created equal but sometimes a generation's equality plummets to the point where it is irretrievably lost. And rather than discriminate between who was right or wrong in the specific incident I lumped all of mankind into one foul basket to be tossed out the window...for the good of the dolphins. The things we call "saving the earth" are often just a ceasefire in the active destruction of it. That's not the same thing though a kind of strained, untrusting relationship is probably the best we can hope for. But if a person was beaten as bad by her spouse as we beat the planet I'd say it's time for the relationship to end. So, I basically lost any identification I had with humanity and moved into the Santa Cruz forest where a completely different set of horrors occurred. I have been trying for twenty years to get my humanity back but it continues to slip further away. Yes, the powers of manipulation have been working overtime to produce conformed consumers (Homo walmarticus) for the mines of commerce but this is one of those black or white issues with me. Either you are an independent thinker (Homo sapien) or you aren't. I've met a handful of independent thinkers...not enough to bother saving the species. Americans are enemies of the earth in practical terms. All our comforts are at the cost of some grazing or swimming animal or poor person. Only by mass propaganda and force and cultural terrorism would Vietnamese people willingly sew Nike basketball sneakers. If you think you are doing them any favors by allowing them to have a job sewing sneakers then you must have some microchip implanted in your brain that downloads Fox News opinions directly to your reasoning center.

Ok, that's enough abuse. I wanted to take a moment of silence and I went on a tirade. This is only because I feel I'm too intertwined with this ghastly system of cultural assimilation. And my neck is killing me. My clothes may be from 1974 but everything I touch is tainted by 2011 dolphin souls. Pray that God is not a dolphin lover. Pray that He loathes nature. Otherwise, we are fucked.